Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine. Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Allison. In an especially emotional moment during a prayer vigil, Barack Obama read out the first names of the 20 children killed in the December 14 school shoot-out in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. The children were all six or seven years old. Six adults at the school were also killed, including the principal, who died trying to save her charges. The shooting has shocked a country long accustomed to gun violence. There were a dozen mass shootings in 2012. Last summer, murderous gun rampages occurred at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and at a cinema in Colorado. President Obama’s visit to Sandy Hook was the fourth time he has been to a community devastated in this way. Fighting tears, an unusually emotional Obama said in an address to the nation that action is needed, “regardless of the politics”. Since the shooting, more than 180,000 Americans have petitioned the White House to introduce gun-control legislation. Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Mark Warner of Virginia — both given A ratings by the National Rifle Association (NRA) — are now calling for gun control. But reformers have a huge task ahead of them. According to one survey, roughly a third of all American households own firearms. Three-quarters of them own more than one. Around 300 million guns are in circulation, about one for every person in the country. Any serious new gun-control law is likely to face opposition from the NRA. The lobby group has bragged that it defeated 19 of the 24 congressmen it targeted in 1994. The NRA kept a low profile the week following the attack, though it promised a statement which would make “meaningful contributions” towards gun safety. Others have acted already: California’s legislature moved to require a licence for anyone buying ammunition, and Cerberus Capital, a private equity group, said it will sell its stake in the firm which made the semi-automatic rifle used in Sandy Hook. Michael Bloomberg, New York’s anti-gun mayor, recently urged President Obama to introduce legislation. If the president fails to act, Bloomberg forecasts that 48,000 Americans will be murdered by guns during his second term — several times more Americans than died on September 11, 2001, in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. Tightening existing laws would be a start. The 1994 Brady Bill, named after Ronald Reagan’s press spokesman who was critically injured in an assassination attempt, prompted federal background checks for gun purchases. The refusal rate is very low, just 0.6 percent of the 157 million checks processed. Besides, 40 percent of firearms purchases are not from licenced gun-dealers but from gun shows, and do not require even this background check. That is one change that may well now be made. Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida, has called for a study on how to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. This distracts from the main issue of…
